Sentimental Value
by rosabelle317
Summary: [Written for the MC gift exchange on Livejournal.] Rusty helps Sharon bring the Christmas decorations back to her storage unit.


**Sentimental Value**

Sharon was one of those people who kept the Christmas decorations up until New Year's. On New Year's Eve, she brought home a plastic tub full of the ornaments Rusty had helped her put up around her office, and they spent New Year's morning untangling the lights from around the tree and pulling the bows off of the wall.

Sharon was _also_ one of those people who was really annoying about organization, so Rusty wasn't much help with packing everything up. He brought her hot chocolate, coiled the lights into neatly-tied bundles, and did his best to stay out of her way while she stacked the angel boxes in the storage tub in exactly the order that she wanted.

He helped her take everything over to her storage unit. Sharon was either sad that Christmas was over or just really missing her kids, and it was a short drive. And... honestly, he was a little curious what Sharon might keep locked up over there.

When they got there, he was a little disappointed he'd gotten dressed for the trip. It was smaller than he'd expected, hardly big enough for them to stand side by side inside of it, but that made sense because hoarding wasn't really Sharon's style. Sharon paid extra for an indoor space but that meant that the light from outside was dim, and the florescent bulb in the ceiling made the space look dingy and dirty even though Rusty was pretty sure that Sharon had cleaned the place before she'd moved all of her stuff into it.

There was a stepladder in one corner but besides that, the only other thing not in the gray plastic tubs was some sort of white wood and metal... _thing_ that came up to about his shoulders and rested in pieces against the wall.

Everything else was stored out of sight, and the boxes were all neatly labelled in Sharon's handwriting. There were two rows of boxes stacked five high, and beside _them_ there was space for a third row. They'd brought five boxes with them.

A third of Sharon's things were Christmas decorations.

_Sharon._

But Rusty found himself smiling as he rolled his eyes, and then he reached for the nearest of the boxes they'd lugged in from two trips to the car. "Does this one go somewhere special?"

"Christmas decorations, office," Sharon read off the side of the box, and shook her head. "That one can go on the floor."

He handed her the box and let her do it, backing up to give her some space. He wasn't especially claustrophobic but if he spent any more time in here he might be, and he was pretty sure that this space was actually bigger than the one he and his other mom had rented, way back during one of their moves where they'd had to dump most of their furniture but she had still cared about holding on to things like her clothes and his toys. And him. That was the first time he'd learned that if he had anything important, he'd better carry it with him.

He caught his foot on the edge of one of the wood pieces, and had to scramble to catch it before it fell into Sharon. "What _is_ this thing, anyway?"

"Oh." Sharon pushed her box into place and straightened up, smiling when she saw what he was holding. "That's the crib Ricky and Emily slept in."

That was what she called them now. Ricky and Emily. For two years, they had been _my children,_ or _my daughter_ and _my son._ He wasn't sure when that had changed. Sometime after Ricky's visit that summer, maybe.

Sharon reached out, her fingertips brushing lightly over the bars. Rusty released the piece he was holding on to, letting it settle gently into her hands, and took another step back.

"Does it just... stay here?" He had no idea what normal mothers did with cribs, okay?

Sharon made a little huff, her eyes sliding sideways in the look he'd learned meant that he was amusing her. "For now," she said. "My grandmother gave me this. She died just before Emily was born."

"Oh."

He tried to remember if Sharon had ever mentioned her grandparents before. He didn't think so. Her other kids, yeah, she talked about all the time. Her parents, she mentioned to him occasionally, but she seemed to look forward to calling them every week.

He'd thought she was an only child until Emily and Ricky had started visiting and asking what Aunt Colleen and Uncle Paul were doing. Sharon was the oldest. Emily told him that was why she was so bossy.

"I thought one of my kids might want it someday, if they ever have children of their own," she said, uncurling her fingers from around the bars. Carefully, she returned it to how it had been before, leaning up against the wall.

"You think they will?"

"Oh, I don't know," Sharon said. "I think so. Ricky wants children. Emily too, but I'd be surprised if she had any before she's thirty-five. And you—" She looked sideways at him, and he had just enough time to panic because wait, _what_, before she laughed gently and touched his arm. "I think you have plenty of time to decide what you want."

Sharon turned, reaching to drag another box into place, and Rusty started breathing again.

Studiously avoiding eye contact with Sharon, he distracted himself by reading the labels on the other boxes. _Baby things. Books. _One box with Ricky's name, another with Emily's. There was even one that said _Jack, _smaller than the rest.

"Does Jack ever come here?"

"I hope not." Sharon followed his gaze when he pointed. "I don't think he has the code. But... oh, you're right, I should go through that and see what I need to give back to him now that we're divorced."

"Why?" he asked. "What's in there?"

"I'm not sure," she said, after a little pause. "Personal effects, I think. His clothes were all in your closet."

She remembered. Rusty didn't even care that much, but there was no faster way for idle curiosity to become genuine interest than for him to realize he was asking Sharon about something she thought was none of his business. He still ran into that a lot, but she'd been more willing to answer his questions since the adoption.

"What about that one?" He pointed to the box labelled _Emily—mine._

"Oh." Sharon laughed a little. "When I moved out of the house, I let the kids each fill up a box or two of things they wanted to keep but had no room for. Then I saved some things of theirs that _I_ wanted to keep."

"Like... what?"

"Their baptismal outfits," she said, and her fingers wrapped around his arm and gave him a gentle shove towards the door. "Emily's first pair of ballet shoes. There's a box left in the car. Go."

* * *

><p>She thought Rusty's curiosity was a good thing.<p>

He'd become more sincere in asking (she had weathered many half-accusatory "do you, like, even have friends?" and "do you _ever_ do anything fun?" that first year and a half), and there was a certain level of openness she was working towards with him now that he was hers. Anything she would tell Ricky and Emily she would share with Rusty. That was the deal she had made with herself.

That didn't include the contents of whatever was in that box of Jack's. No, she'd come back later and sort through that in private, though she didn't remember anything too personal being stored in there. It was mostly odds and ends she'd found while cleaning out the house. His grandfather's watch. A set of ugly brass bookends shaped like ducks that he'd bought because... well, she'd never been entirely clear on that. Jack had never taken any other interest in ducks before or after, but he'd genuinely loved those things.

She had his wedding suit, too, even the powder blue bow tie, cleaned, pressed, and tucked carefully away with her wedding dress and a couple of photo albums. Those had been in a box long before she'd ever needed the storage unit. Maybe it was time to sort through that box too.

Beneath the wedding box were three boxes labelled _books._

She reached out and rested a hand on the side of the crib as she considered the boxes, wrapping her fingers around the well-worn wooden bars. She only remembered having one.

Sharon checked her watch, then went to poke her head out of the door and take a look around. The hallway was empty; no sign of her son. Rusty was dragging his feet. The car wasn't _that_ far away.

She took the step ladder and brought it to the shelves. The wedding things and Jack's little box were easy enough to set on the floor. The uppermost box of books was trickier. She was strong, but it was heavy. She eased it down little by little, one edge braced against the other boxes as she lowered the other carefully, holding it cushioned against her breasts. When she took a step down from the ladder, the box thudded against the bar of the stepladder. She caught the other end on her thigh and from there, lowered it to the ground. It slid a little quickly at the end. Yes, there were definitely books in there.

With minimal space to work with, Sharon returned the wedding box to the top of the stack and folded up the stepladder. She leaned that against the tower of boxes and tried to make herself as comfortable as she could possibly be down on the floor wedged between the book box and the wall with the stepladder pressing into her back.

The first layer of books were definitely all hers. A couple on the early history of modern law enforcement, some about _women_ in the history of law enforcement, one examining the relationship between women and the Catholic Church, and for whatever reason, the 2000 edition of _The Unofficial Guide to Disneyland._

On second thought, maybe that one wasn't hers. She set it to the side, though she doubted Ricky would be wanting that back.

"Sharon?"

Rusty was back.

"There you are." She looked up when he appeared, the last of the Christmas boxes in his arms. It was the lightest one, and held the Christmas tree skirt, the tree lights, and all of her little red bows, packed loosely so as not to crush them. "I was starting to wonder if you'd locked the keys in the car again."

"Sorry," he said. "Alex—this guy from my psychology class—he was trying to organize a study session with, like, eight people and... anyway." He shrugged. "What are you doing?"

"I started looking through some of these boxes while I was waiting for you," she said. "I'm not entirely sure why these are here. Did you get that all sorted out?"

"Yeah. We're meeting tomorrow." There was no room for him with her on the floor as she was. He set the box down in the doorway instead and sat on it, leaning over to squint at the books. "Who's Lola Baldwin?"

"One of the first American policewomen," she said, frowning at the cover of a dog-eared children's book. There was a young girl in a pink leotard, her arms raised triumphantly over her head. She flipped it over. The summary on the back described the story of a young gymnast who had to overcome the sudden fear of the balance beam that she developed after injuring herself in competition. Sharon vaguely recalled that Emily had read that book a thousand times, but that didn't explain why she had it now.

Rusty leaned closer but touched none of the books, instead hovering over them much the same way he always at her bedroom door on the rare occasion that he even approached her while she was inside. "You really like history.

Amused, Sharon looked up. "I was a history major. "

Rusty stared at her. "Really?"

It was her turn to be surprised. They'd had so _many_ conversations about college... mostly about how yes, Rusty should attend it, but she could've sworn that she'd at least mentioned it... "With a double minor in women's studies and religious studies."

"Oh," he said, still looking at her in confusion. "I thought you wanted to be a lawyer, though?"

"I did," she said. "That's why I picked those things, besides finding them interesting, of course. The thing is, Rusty, you can apply to law school with any major you'd like. I chose fields that I thought would teach me the sort of critical thinking skills that would be useful later—and they have, even if not quite like I imagined."

She'd been lucky in that regard.

When Sharon had finally accepted that she was never going to law school, she had been seven months pregnant with Ricky. She had been alone in the house with Emily, then just shy of her fourth birthday. Jack had been halfway through his month-long first rehab stay. She had looked at her daughter and part of her had hoped that Emily had inherited this from her, that Emily would go on to do what Sharon hadn't.

She'd abandoned that dream shortly afterwards, because it quickly became apparent that Emily had inherited something else from her instead. She'd known what she'd wanted to do the moment Sharon had put her in that first leotard and then she had pursued it with a single-minded sort of determination that made Sharon ache with pride. And in the end, she had done what Sharon hadn't been able to, after all.

Sharon smiled down at the little book in her lap, and stroked her fingertips against the cover. Maybe Emily would want her to hold on to it awhile longer. She returned it carefully to the box, and began to replace the others on top of it. "I think I'd like to go through these boxes," she said. "And I think I'd rather do it at home. The light's better, and it's not quite so crowded."

"Like... all of them?"

Sharon hesitated. It would be easiest to just bring them all with them now. They were already here, and she was going to need Rusty's help carrying them. She weight her dislike of unnecessary trips with the annoyance she knew that she would feel later in the week when she inevitably landed a case and so left them sitting in her living room untouched because she was too exhausted to look at them.

"Just one for now," she said. "I'll need your help with it. It's heavy."

She needed his help standing, too; her legs had fallen asleep, and she stumbled when she tried to get up. Rusty caught her arm. She patted his shoulder in thanks, wincing at the pins and needles feeling in her legs.

Together, they maneuvered the box of books out of the storage unit and then at last set the last box of Christmas ornaments at the top of the stack. Sharon switched off the light, and then ushered Rusty out of the space before locking the door firmly behind them.

"Come on," she said. "Let's go home."


End file.
